


you and me and the devil makes two

by Adversarial



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Paul is POV character for once, Post-End, Red Army-centric, Smoking, Wakes & Funerals, backstories for characters who really didn't need backstories, i can't believe it's not tomtord™, yuu is a member of the clergy for narrative convenience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 15:12:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12773706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adversarial/pseuds/Adversarial
Summary: "Mind if I buy you a drink, Paul? I need to talk out some ideas with a person who gets it." He was smiling at you, half-joking but half-serious and desperate and you got that, the desperation to be understood and to be not alone for once."Drinks are on me," you said, hoisting yourself off the curb and offering him a hand up. He took it.





	you and me and the devil makes two

It's a closed-casket affair.

You're grateful for that, honestly. Yuu wanted it open, wanted to pay his respects to his leader's face one more time, but Patryck shot him down. _You saw him in the medbay, Yuu,_ he'd growled, eyes steely. _You of all people should know that he wouldn't want anyone to see that._

You know how people think, most days, and you know how Patryck thinks in particular, and you'd bet a cigarette that he's got his mind on PR right now, thoughts skipping right past grief straight to media management, because God knew that you couldn't maintain the abject, necessary terror that Tord had earned himself if people could see the state of his corpse. The reality of his body was too honest for his image.

You'd bet the rest of the pack that Patryck would give any excuse not to look at that body again. 

\---

Here's the thing about you and funerals. 

When you were thirteen and working your first job (logging company, shit hours but they paid minimum wage and didn't ask too many questions so you'd take it), your father had sat you down and told you to start saving up for your own. Headstones and coffins and grave space were expensive, he'd told you, coal dust embedded in the cracks of his skin and the soft tissue of his lungs. And if you wanted people to remember you, well. You'd better save up enough for your own burial, because God knew that he didn't have the cash to cover it. Nobody wants an unmarked grave.

And when you were sixteen and the dust finally got him (because that's the thing: it got everyone, in the end) and he didn't have the cash for his funeral and you had to bury him yourself, you and your cousin digging a shallow grave off the freeway, you thought to yourself, This is not what I want for my son. So you started saving a little bit of your paycheck each week. 

Patryck never got why you did that. You'd tried to explain it to him, a few times. What it was like to grow up in the kind of town that had the kind of people who spent their whole lives worried that they wouldn't have enough for a proper burial. You tried to explain the day they paved over your father, because four lanes wasn't enough anymore, apparently, fuckers didn't care if there was something important being steamrolled, how you'd gotten into a shouting match with the foreman that ended with you punching his truck and breaking two bones in your hand, and Patryck had nodded and looked sympathetic and not gotten it, not really. 

So you guess what you're saying is you're happy. Happy that Patryck never needed to understand and happy that Tord was getting an actual burial, one that wouldn't get paved over in a couple of years. It was a weight off your shoulders. 

And if you maybe started putting away a little more of your paycheck each week, starting when your leader had first woken up with a fever and the beginnings of gangrene, well. That was on you.

\---

"Why do you ask?" 

It's the night before the funeral and Patryck's laying in your bed, shirtless and disheveled, eyes locked on the ceiling while you glare at the blank sheet of paper on your desk. When you turn to look at him, you see the tiny flame of your lighter in his hand as he takes a drag of a cigarette. You sigh, run a hand through your hair. 

"I'm trying to write a eulogy." 

"Was this what you were thinking about while you were fucking me? Because that would explain a few things," he drawls, and you groan. "My ass has some complaints." 

"Babe, please," you implore. He's not looking at you, instead electing to keep staring at the ceiling. The ash of his cigarette is already worryingly long. "Also, christ. Stop smoking those things in bed."

(you'd never figured out if tord had known about the two of you. now you guess you never will.)

"You're definitely one to talk," he retorts, before following it up with, "sorry. That was mean."

"It was," you say, going back to staring at your paper. You hear him shift to sit up, don't move when he walks over to you at your desk and rests his chin on your shoulder and sighs out smoke.

"It's been a rough few days for all of us," he mumbles, and you kiss his stubbly cheek. You can't actually remember the last time he neglected to shave for this long. 

"Can you just answer the question for me?" What you don't say: I need this closure. He wraps his arms around you lazily.

"Yeah. Yeah, I can."

\---

Nobody ever figured out how Tord managed his recruiting. That was part of the magic of him-- he could tell, at a glance, when someone was struggling, could comfort them and could talk them into following him to the ends of the Earth. It was just something about his voice, how it dropped down quiet when he was serious. 

Patryck told you that Tord had seen him standing outside of a grocery store in the middle of July, when temperatures reached heatstroke levels, still sweating in his NGO-sponsered fuzzy vest and asking passerbys if they could donate today to a campaign for a better future. 

Tord had listened earnestly to Patryck through his entire sales pitch (this first person who ever did), had walked inside the store and bought him a water and when Patryck came to after spending thirty seconds passed out on the concrete due to the combined effects of heatstroke and dehydration, Tord had offered to carry him inside. Patryck demurred. Tord insisted. 

"Someone's gotta... Mind the front..." Patryck had slurred. "Election's... Comin' up soon... 'S important..." 

Tord asked if Patryck would go inside if he offered to cover Patryck's spot for the rest of his shift. Patryck, in no state to argue, agreed. He spent the rest of his shift inside the grocery store, chugging water and watching Tord, now clad in his vest, repeat his spiel verbatim to everyone who walked by. He was amazed to see that people listened.

 _He was using his speech voice,_ Patryck said. _You know the one._

So when Patryck's replacement showed up and Tord bundled Patryck into his car and drove him home and talked about the possibility of a revolution, Patryck believed him. And when he talked about politics and philosophy and governmental corruption and the need to start over, Patryck believed him. And when Tord looked at Patryck and told him that he needed more people with that kind of conviction, that willingness to sit in the burning sun and keep going until your body gave out if it was for something important, really important, Patryck knew that he would follow this man till his death.

 _I guess that just got me, you know? That willingness to give everything up for a brighter future._ He paused for a moment. _That's the thing about Tord. I don't think anyone would mind dying for him. He made you feel like your loss could change the world._

\---

Here's the difference between you and Patryck.

When he showed up on day one, bright-eyed and determined, you didn't understand him at all. Here was a man who had everything-- a supportive home, a law degree in the works, enough money to pay for his own funeral. What the hell was he doing throwing his lot in with the rest of you? 

"He's different," Tord had told you, as the two of you watched him in the sparring ring, getting his ass handed to him for the third time in as many minutes. You gave him maybe two more rounds before he tapped out. "His reasons for being here are different. He's an idealist, I think." 

"He has a lot more to lose," you'd commented, puffing on your cigar. You only smoked cigars when Tord was around. 

Tord laughed. "He has something to fight for." What he didn't say: You and I, Paul? We fight out of desperation.

Because that was the thing, wasn't it. You know how to read people and what ultimately drew you to this whole desperate operation was looking into Tord's eyes and seeing your own fears mirrored back to you. And you'd thought, He gets it. And you'd thought, This is something I would fight for.

Meanwhile, you watched Patryck drag himself back to his feet, teeth bared, loose hair falling out of his ponytail and getting stuck in the blood on his face. The last recruit had gotten a good hit on his nose. He didn't tap out.

"We'll see," Tord had said, as Patryck went down again, got up again, still didn't tap out. He ripped the elastic out of his hair and for a moment you were entranced by the dark wave of it before he caught it all up in a ponytail again. 

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, FUCKASS? COME AT ME," he screamed, and the drill instructor looked like he was about to say something when Tord called out, "let him go another round!"

You watched Patryck go four more matches before they had to cart him to medbay and learned that you didn't have to understand a man to respect him. 

\---

It rains on the day of the funeral. 

Thousands of people show up to pay their respects, a mismatched mob of people in dress uniforms and black civilian clothes. Most of them have never seen Tord in person before, and when you whisper as much to Yuu, he snorts.

"They're not here for Tord," he says, striking a match and lighting up his cigar. "They're here for Red Leader." 

You shuffle your notecards for a moment. He's right. 

You think about your father with his coal-dust lungs and how he's six feet under pavement and think, There is a parallel here, probably. Somewhere between a headstone and memory, there's a parallel. 

"His name isn't on the grave marker, you know," Patryck comments, walking up behind you. His dress uniform covers his entire neck and for that, you're grateful. "He didn't want people connecting his old identity to Red Army. Said it was a vulnerability." 

"Did he ever," you start, pausing when Yuu and Patryck turn to look at you. "Did he ever mention anything about his past to either of you? Anything about who he was before the army?"

"Nothing," Yuu replies, and Patryck nods his agreement. "He was just Red Leader until the end."

\---

You remember the day that Tord found you. 

You were sitting on a street corner, breathing hard, blood crusting on your forehead from the cuts on your face, probably already on the way to getting infected. You couldn't afford a trip to urgent care right now. You were trying to not think about it too much.

"You're Paul?" He asked, and you glowered up at him. 

"Yeah? Who wants to know?"

Tord sank down next to you, a grin on his face. "So I hear you got into a fight with the head of a major construction firm."

You gestured at your face. "No shit, Sherlock." 

He laughed at that, and it drained some of the tension from you. Not a plainclothes cop, then. "Mind telling me why?"

You'd had no idea where to start. "He was trying to cut hours again. My crew needed those hours. They've got families to feed, y'know? And it's not like we can unionize. Someone had to do something." 

"Do you have a family to feed?" Tord had asked, and it was your turn to laugh. "Apparently not. So this really wasn't your problem was it? You could still feed yourself on your wages." 

"Sure I could. But..."

"But it's still unfair. But your friends are suffering. But the idea of someone ruining your coworkers' lives like that makes you want to, say, punch a rich asshole," Tord finished, and you turned to stare at him only to find him looking at you. "Did I get it?" 

"... Yeah," you said slowly. "You're the first person who has." 

"Mind if I buy you a drink, Paul? I need to talk out some ideas with a person who gets it." He was smiling at you, half-joking but half-serious and desperate and you got that, the desperation to be understood and to be not alone for once. 

"Drinks are on me," you said, hoisting yourself off the curb and offering him a hand up. He took it.

So you went to the nearest pub and bought him a drink and stayed there until late in the night talking about revolution and when you left he gave the panhandler outside the bar a twenty and offered her a place to crash for the night and you knew, then, that you would follow him anywhere, paid off your lease and left your apartment and got into his car and set out to change the world on an impulse that would prove right, because that was just the kind of man that Tord was. 

He made you feel like you could... You don't know. 

Fix things, maybe.

\---

Here's the thing about Tord.

You look out at the mass of people who came to his funeral and you clear your throat and you give your eulogy.

You speak haltingly, because you aren't the kind of public speaker that Tord was, and your words may fall flat, but they're genuine and they're kind and they reach the people that they're meant to reach. They reach Patryck, and Yuu, and all the men who knew Tord as well as Red Leader, which is important, you think. It feels important. When you step down after your speech, you feel like you've done his ghost justice, at least a little.

(you're thinking about him in the hospital during his last days, one-eyed and one-armed, starved and delirious with fever as his vital signs moved slowly towards untenable. how small he looked in the hospital bed. how he still found it in him to give you a weak smile and tell you not to worry, paul, it was all going to work out the way it was supposed to, in the end.)

And then Patryck takes the stage and says his piece and he sells it, really sells it, the entire Red Army ideology all at once, honed to a fine edge by its leader's martyrdom, nothing personal to speak of but the crowd goes wild with rage and grief. And you listen and you think, This is why he will be our new leader. And you see the steel in his eyes, no bloody nose this time and think, God, don't let him lose himself in the process.

And you're thinking about what Tord told you, when he told you the little you knew about him, how once upon a time, he'd had two friends and a nice house and an okay life if not a good one. How once upon a time, there'd been this boy with an alcohol problem and how Tord looked at you when he said, "Paul, my friend, I was a terrible person for a very long time before we met."

("i had to give up who i was to be who i wanted to be, paul. and maybe that's sad, but this way, i can maybe make it up to the world a little before i die")

Patryck finishes his eulogy and the cemetery is silent, the masses paying their respects as Yuu is silent before delivering the closing prayers, clerical collar glittering in the rain.

(and finally:

"i want to die a good person. tord wasn't a good person, but red leader might be.")

So you guess what you're saying is that you miss him. Red Leader, of course, but mostly Tord. 

Thousands of people have come to see the death of a legend, but only a few came to see the death of a man.

\---

Patryck doesn't touch you until the crowd has mostly dispersed. Even when they're gone, he can't manage much more than a hand on your shoulder as you stare blankly at the gravestone. 

"Yuu says that over ten thousand people came to pay their respects," Patryck murmurs, and that is a cold comfort. 

"Do you miss him?" you ask, and Patryck sighs. 

"He wouldn't want you lingering on that, you know." The hand on your shoulder slides down until it holds your own. "But yes. More than I thought I would."

"He was a good man," you say.

"And an incredible leader."

You shake your head. "He was a good man. You'll be an incredible leader." 

Patryck smiles at that, and you're sure that he missed at least half your point, but that's okay. You're fine with your mourning being private.

When you finally turn to leave, you see a man standing a few meters back, eyes downcast. There is a flask in his hands, and when he raises it to take a sip you think, Once upon a time there was a boy with an alcohol problem-

He turns to leave when he sees you looking at him.

"He was a good man," you call to his back, and he pauses. 

"Was he, now," he says, almost to himself, and before you can process that, he's disappeared into the rain. 

\---

("hey, paul," he'd said. "do you think that anyone can be a good person if they just try?"

"i dunno. why do you ask?"

you'd taken a final puff of your cigar before throwing it in the dirt, grinding it out with your boot. 

"no reason at all.")

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who read my other works, this is part of the same canon as Dialectic. Totally planned, guys. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my beautiful beta reader and moirail @jinxedlucky! Check out my hot new writing account @adversarial-official for more content and see y'all for the next one!


End file.
